Playden,
Could you please be a little more specific. Forum members can assist better if they know some of the details.
You said, "I can't get the HAL Assistant to work." Does it run at all? Do you get error messages? If so, what are they?
You said, "It appears that all those things that didn't work with the unpaid "Free" version... also don't work in the paid version." What "things" do/don't work?
Other info that may help is a brief description of your system. For example:
Windows XP, 1.8gHz, 256MB RAM, ATI 32MB video card, etc.
I hope forum members can help out.
=vonsmith=